What a 1,000-Seat Study Found About Car Seat Safety in Canada
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You install the car seat, click the harness, and pull out of the driveway feeling like you did everything right. That's exactly what most of the parents in a 2024 Nova Scotia roadside study believed too, and it's also exactly why the study matters. Researchers pulled over more than a thousand vehicles carrying kids, had certified technicians check every seat, and found that the gap between "feels right" and "installed right" is bigger than almost anyone expects.
This article walks through what the 2024 Nova Scotia Child Restraint Use Study found, why CYBEX Canada helped make it happen, and what the results actually mean for car seat safety across Canada, not just Nova Scotia.
TL;DR
Researchers from Dalhousie University and Child Safety Link, working with the Child Passenger Safety Association of Canada and CYBEX Canada, inspected 1,005 car seats at roadside checkpoints across Nova Scotia in 2024. They found that 81.4% of rear-facing, forward-facing, and booster seats had at least one error, whether that was the wrong seat for the child's stage, a damaged or expired restraint, a loose harness, or an installation issue. Almost every error was fixable in minutes once a technician pointed it out, which is really the headline takeaway: a quick check catches almost everything.
Why CYBEX Canada helped fund this research
CYBEX has built its reputation on a simple idea: a lot of car seat safety comes down to catching human error before it happens. Their SensorSafe technology, built into seats like the Aton G Swivel SensorSafe Infant Car Seat, uses a Bluetooth-enabled chest clip that alerts your phone if the harness comes undone, the car gets too warm, or your child is left unattended. Features like the Anti-Rebound Base and SafeLock installation system, found on seats like the Callisto G 360° SensorSafe Rotating All-In-One Convertible Seat, are designed to make correct installation harder to get wrong in the first place.
That philosophy is exactly why CYBEX Canada partnered with Dalhousie University and Child Safety Link on this study. If most car seat errors come down to how seats are used day to day rather than which seat a family bought, then the most useful thing a brand can do is fund the research that shows exactly where those errors happen, then design and educate around them. That's the spirit this whole study, and this whole article series, is written in.
How the study worked
Between May and November 2024, a research team led by Dr. Mark Asbridge at Dalhousie University's Department of Community Health and Epidemiology set up 41 roadside checkpoints at 33 sites across six regions of Nova Scotia, working alongside local RCMP and police detachments. Every vehicle carrying a child under 14 was invited to take part. Drivers who agreed completed a short questionnaire, and a certified Child Passenger Safety Technician (CPST) inspected the child's restraint using a standardized checklist, the same kind of checklist CPSTs use during a car seat dry fit.
Of 1,121 eligible children, 1,005 restraint inspections were completed and included in the final results, making this one of the largest roadside car seat studies conducted in Canada in the last decade.
The headline number
Of the 1,005 car seats inspected, 81.4% had at least one error, whether that meant the wrong seat for the child's stage, a damaged or expired restraint, a loose harness, or a seat that wasn't installed correctly. That's an increase from the last comparable Nova Scotia study, done in 2015, which suggests car seat safety in Canada hasn't been improving on its own over the last decade.
To be clear, this isn't a story about careless parents. Technicians found that most drivers genuinely believed their seat was installed correctly before the check began. The errors were almost always fixable in minutes once someone showed the driver what to look for, which is really the point of the study: small, invisible mistakes are common, and a quick check catches nearly all of them.
Where the errors showed up most, by stage
The study broke results down by restraint stage, and the pattern is worth understanding stage by stage rather than as one big number.
Rear-facing car seats
77.4% of rear-facing seats had an error. The single most common issue was a harness that was too loose (32.6%), followed by the chest clip sitting above or below armpit level (17.7%). On the installation side, more than a quarter of seats (26.5%) weren't secured tightly enough at the belt path, and 25.4% had the recline angle set incorrectly for the child's age.
This is also the stage where a seat's own design can help the most. An Anti-Rebound Base, like the one built into the Callisto G 360° from CYBEX, works alongside a steel-reinforced frame to reduce movement in a crash and does a lot of the stability work that a loose or shifting install would otherwise miss. Browse our full convertible car seat collection if you're shopping for a seat that stays rear-facing longer.
Forward-facing car seats
89.2% of forward-facing seats had an error, the highest error rate of any stage. A loose harness was again the top issue (43.8%), and more than a third of seats (34.1%) weren't using the top tether at all, one of the simplest and most effective upgrades a family can make once a seat is forward-facing.
Seats with SensorSafe technology, including the Callisto G 360° from CYBEX, use a Bluetooth-enabled chest clip that alerts your phone if the harness comes unbuckled mid-drive, which directly targets the single most common forward-facing error found in the study.
Booster seats
77.3% of booster seats had an error. The most common problems were a poor shoulder belt fit (26.6%) and a misrouted seat belt (43.8%), meaning the belt wasn't sitting where it needed to be across the shoulder and hip to do its job in a crash.
Booster design matters here too. The Solution G2 Folding High-Back Booster from CYBEX uses a patented reclining headrest and side wings built around the same Linear Side-Impact Protection System used across the CYBEX lineup, keeping a child positioned correctly as they grow, which is exactly the kind of shift that leads to a misrouted belt over time. See our full booster car seat collection for more options.
Moving to a seat belt alone
Nova Scotia law, in step with guidance used across Canada, says a child should be 4 feet 9 inches tall or 9 years old before riding with a seat belt alone, no booster. Among children, the study found that, already using just a seat belt, 26.3% hadn't actually met that threshold yet, which suggests a lot of families are making this jump earlier than the seat belt itself was designed to handle safely.
Why it matters
These aren't small details. Appropriate restraint use lowers a child's risk of death in a crash by up to 75% and the risk of serious injury by close to 70%. A car seat only delivers that protection when it's the right seat for the child's current stage, and it's installed and used correctly on every single trip, not just the first one.
The good news is that every issue in the study is checkable in a few minutes, without any special tools. We've broken down the single biggest mistake at each stage, with a plain-language fix, in our car seat mistakes guide, and walked through what a correct fit looks like stage by stage in our correct fit checklist.
If you'd rather have a second set of eyes on it, every Snuggle Bugz store offers a free dry fit: a certified technician checks your seat's fit and installation in your actual vehicle, no appointment fee and no obligation to buy anything.
About the study
The 2024 Nova Scotia Child Restraint Use Study was conducted by Dr. Mark Asbridge's team in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University, in partnership with Child Safety Link at the IWK Health Centre, the Child Passenger Safety Association of Canada, and CYBEX Canada. Data collection ran from May to November 2024 across 33 sites in six regions of Nova Scotia, with 1,005 child restraint inspections included in the final results. Nearly all of the 93 replacement seats given out during the study were provided by CYBEX Canada.